Background Music

Continuous music that plays beneath narration or dialogue to establish mood, atmosphere, and emotional tone in media. In accessible audio production, background music should be distinguished from discrete sound effects: BGM sustains ambience and should continue underneath audio descriptions (fading but not cutting abruptly), while sound effects highlight specific discrete actions or events. Research recommends keeping BGM at low volume with flexible duration (1.5-3 seconds depending on narrative tension), applying automatic volume ducking when narration starts, and treating any audio effect that sustains ambience as BGM rather than SFX for production purposes.